


All the Words of Mice and Men

by Writegirl



Series: Fucked Up Love Songs [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, Emotions, F/M, False Pregnancy, Gen, Meet the Family, Phil Coulson's Cellist, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-27 01:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writegirl/pseuds/Writegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The continuing trails and tribulations of Phil Coulson, Agent of SHIELD, and Darcy Lewis, coffee jockey.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i> Darcy said the first thing that came to her mind. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a nightmare meld of Shaft and a pirate?”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

        “She really wants you there, Darcy. Would you please at least consider it?”

        Darcy bit her bottom lip, keeping the automatic 'no' inside. If anyone else asked her, she would have said it flat out, but this wasn't anyone. “I’ll think about it,” she said at last.

        “Honestly?”

        She frowned, eyes on her house shoes. “I promise I’ll think about it. Seriously, for like... at least twenty minutes.” The problem was that she would, for Ginger. She liked her aunt, even though she only saw her once or twice a year when she came down from Alberta.

        “Thank you.” The older woman sounded relieved.

        “Is something happening?”

        “No.” Her aunt sounded like she was hedging, and Aunt Ginger never hedged. “It’s just been such a long time since we’ve seen you. You skipped last Thanksgiving and Christmas entirely.”

        And yeah, maybe those weren’t her finest moments, but she had _reasons_ damn it, and they trumped trying not to choke her mother with the wishbone. “I was working.” Which she was, at a coffee shop in Albuquerque that barely paid her enough to rent couch space. The tradeoff was she could make coffee capable of luring Jane away from her equations, something that counted as a super power in her book.

        “I know, Deedee, doesn’t mean you weren’t missed.”

        It was statements like that that made warm fuzzies take up residence in her chest. Conversations with her aunt were calming, just short of soothing, for Darcy. “Are you coming down?”

        There was the sound of pounding feet in the background followed by a muffled scream. “Tania! Shelly!” Aunt Ginger sighed. “The whole clan. We’re taking the RV. Are you staying at home, or-“

        “Probably at a La Quinta, _if_ I come.” Because if she had to come home for Thanksgiving, something she managed to avoid for the past two years, there was no way she was staying in the house. She and her mother would kill each other after a few hours. Previously she would have put her money on her mom, but with the self-defense lessons Phil was giving her she'd put it on a fifty-fifty split. 

        By the time they finished talking Darcy was spread across her couch, snuggie firmly wrapped around her and electric tea pot going. She had all of the windows open so it was cold in the apartment. It was also going to rain, and she wanted to enjoy every bit of the smell she could before the pounding water made her close them. She loved the weather where she lived; sunny, not really getting super hot or super cold, but sometimes she missed the smell of wet. 

        The first sprinkles were beginning to fall when _Secret Agent Man_ chimed through the apartment.

        “Hello Agent Sexy Pants.” She turned on her television, closed her window and set her phone on speaker. “How’s the weather in New York?”

        “Cold.”

        She sighed. “Is Mr. Angry making everyone tremble with fear again?”

        There was rustling over the phone, the sound of a body hitting a couch. “It’s been interesting.” Which was Phil for something happened that he didn’t expect, but since no one was dead (she thought) he was okay with it. 

        She turned her attention to the matter at hand. “Popcorn?”

        “Popped and waiting. Tea?”

        “Gettin’ steamy.”

        They quieted when the parental warning flashed on the screen. “Think anyone’ll figure out what Shane did?” she asked as she poured hot tea into her mug.

        “I think they’re more interested in making sure Carl pulls through.”

        Darcy snorted. “The kid’ll outlast all of them,” she grumbled as she blew on her tea. “Probably because they’ll die trying to save him.” She took a drink. “So… how will you rescue the lovely Dr. Jane Foster and I when the zombies emerge with brain cravings?”

        There was crunching over the line. “Mandatory airlift to White Sands, then evacuation to the helicarrier. We’ve done simulations. Five hours after the initial outbreak at most.”

        “You are so lying.” She winced at the screen as a body part was separated from a screaming extra. “Anyway. Thanksgiving is coming.”

        “Will hot pincers and acid be involved?”

        “Depends. Got plans?”

        “Usually I spend three days with my sister and her family. She’s stationed in Germany at the moment.” Air whistled over the phone. “He ran out of bullets four shots ago.”

        Darcy hummed in agreement. “You’d think they’d realize a Colt Python only holds six rounds.”

        “Amateurs. What were you planning for the holidays?”

        “Nothing. Cook. Eat. Pass out from turkey overdose. The usual." Except this year she was able to cook in her own kitchen. "Jane’s talking about heading back to California to see her mom, so it’ll be me by my lonesome.”

        They watched the show for ten minutes in silence. “My sister has never made a moist turkey in her life,” Phil sighed.

        She fought the urge to snicker. “That is the worst invitation to a family function I’ve ever heard, Agent.”

        “Who said I was inviting you?”

        Darcy flinched as her stomach dropped and prickles flashed along her arms. He sounded so dismissive. _It's a joke,_ she told the uncomfortable flutters in her chest. “Harsh, dude,” she covered, taking a too-hot swallow of tea. “So harsh.”

        “I have two first class tickets to Luxembourg…” he trailed off. “That… was probably the most accurate depiction of what happens to a submerged corpse I’ve ever seen.”

        “Wait, wait, wait… So I am invited?” _He wants me to meet his family!!!_ Somewhere inside her chest a five year old was dancing.

        “I was going to talk to you about it when I got in, but you pre-empted me.” There was a small hitch to Phil’s voice. “Interested?”

        “ _Yes!”_ She shrieked, and then cleared her throat. “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.” Holy shit, did she even have her passport?

        “No trouble. And I renewed your passport last month.”

        “Mind reader.”

        He said nothing in response.

* * *

        “Pregnancy test? Check. Timer? Check. Gloves? Check. Desire to do this?”

        Darcy stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She liked her bathroom. It was small with dark green tiles on the walls and white ones with purple flowers on the floor and outlining the mirror. It was a good bathroom. She turned around and looked at the shower, frowning when she noticed streaks on the glass door. She should clean that. She really… _really…_ needed to clean that.

        “Nope. Nope, nope. No dodging.” Darcy turned back to her reflection. “Desire to do this?” She didn’t want to do this. She _so_ didn’t want to do this. But not doing it meant going to an actual doctor, a SHIELD approved doctor, and she had no illusions to how long it would take to get back to Phil. 

        She’d put her money on thirty seconds. Max. 

        Darcy closed her eyes and counted backwards from a hundred. She was three weeks late and that shit couldn’t fly any longer. Phil was coming back from New York tomorrow, so she was as alone as she’d ever be. She needed to know, before she went to meet his family, before things got any more serious.

        “Check.”

        Two minutes later she sat on her toilet staring out the window, willing the test to show only one line. “One minute,” she muttered, eyes darting to her Fat Chef timer as it clicked away. She refused to look at the strip itself, not until time. She imagined a kid with her attitude and hair mixed with Phil’s eyes and terrifying efficiency. Someone she could teach the cello to and have sleepovers with. A kid Phil could take home to his family and show off. When the buzzer went she lunged for the test, zeroed in on the results window.

        One line.

        “Holy shit.” She breathed in and out slowly. One line. She wasn’t pregnant.

        Halle-fucking-lujah.

        The pregnancy test was shoved into a plastic bag with as much trash as she could gather (which wasn’t much, since Phil took OCD to new levels when he was around) and tossed it in the dumpster. It wasn’t paranoia, she thought as she debated climbing into the dumpster to bury the bag further. For all she knew SHIELD had flying robots that would collect and codify their employee’s trash. She wouldn’t put it past them.

        She fished out her cell phone as she climbed the stairs. It was nine in the morning, so she wasn’t surprised when Jane sounded less awake and more pissed. “Unless the world is ending-“

        “We’re going shopping.”

        _That_ woke her boss up. A little. “Shopping?”

        “Yep.” She tucked the phone under her chin and pulled on a pair of jeans. “Shopping. I need feta.”

        “Feta.”

        “And a leg of lamb. And a grill.” She did a mental check of her bank account. “I need to go to Socorro and you’re coming with me.”

        Jane made a groan that faded into a raspberry. “Darcy, I went to sleep four hours ago.”

        “I’ll give you my recipe for candied bacon.”

        “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

        

        The first thing Phil noticed as he approached Darcy’s apartment was the smell; roasting meat and vegetables, spices that reminded him of hot weather and blue waters. It was followed by Darcy’s voice and Jane’s quieter tones. The night before she mentioned making him dinner. He assumed it would be something from his list of favorites (which consisted of most of her Italian repetoire). Judging by the smell and the lack of fire alarm Darcy was doing the majority of the cooking. 

        He'd refused her offer of picking him up in Albuquerque. Phil would never admit it to her, but he needed time. He had to leave four days after coming back from Thailand, and after dealing with Mark Disteffino he never found time to talk to Darcy about the pregnancy test. He was willing to admit that was more by design than by accident, and the fact that he was so willing to put it off was telling. He never brought it up during their phone conversations, and she never mentioned it. The time away gave him something he didn’t know he needed. After New York, after who SHIELD just found, he needed the time to center himself more than ever.

        It wasn’t often you got to see your childhood hero.

        Never in his life would he have believed they would find Steve Rogers, Captain America himself. Not only find him but find him _alive,_ unchanged after sixty-seven years encased in ice. Nick wouldn’t tell him why he was on a military flight to New York when he called at two in the morning, only that Phil needed to be ready for the pickup. When he got the dossier in-flight he thought it was an elaborate prank. The closer he got to New York, the more he read, the more excited he became. When he left New York the captain was still unconscious, but the doctors believed he would wake. The EEG’s taken since his discovery showed off the chart brain activity, and twenty four hours after being unfrozen he was off the ventilator.

        Thinking about Captain America, about his childhood, brought this thoughts back to the possibility of having a child of his own. Back to Darcy and information he had yet to receive pointing one way or the other.

        “I’m telling you, you’ll love it. It’s good.”

        “It _smells_ good.”

        Phil smiled.

        “Jesus, I can’t believe you’ve never had kid before.”

        There was a fake gagging sound.

        “Oh please, you told me your sister’s wiccan.”

        “Newly converted, and I worry for her children.”

        “They’re baptized, right?”

        “ _Goodbye,_ Darcy.” The door whipped open, followed by a burst of heat and thin smoke and he dropped the smile, adopting his Agent Face, as Darcy called it.

        “Dr. Foster.”

        She meeped, actually meeped and it was hard not to laugh as she backpedaled to keep from running into him. 

        “Agent Coulson.”

        “Quit if, Phil,” Darcy called from inside. “Jane, have I ever steered you wrong?”

        The astrophysicist sighed. “Fine. I die of food poisoning-“

        “You can haunt me forever.”

        Jane rolled her eyes and hefted a plastic bag before stepping around him. “She’s been cooking since yesterday,” she warned. “And holding me hostage!” The last she yelled into the apartment.

        “You loved every second of it!”

        Jane skipped down the stairs and Phil gave an internal shake of his head. “You’ve been busy,” he commented.

        Darcy emerged from the kitchen, swamped in her Challenge Accepted apron.

        “The tie-dye worked out,” he noted.

        “Tie-dye is love. Keep the door open.”

        Phil did as ordered, leaning his weight against it to keep it from closing in the sudden cold breeze. Inside the smoke was thicker, and judging by the way Darcy was fanning the fire alarm it had already gone off once. An oversized box with a picture of a grill sat in the middle of the apartment. “Are you bar-b-cueing in-doors?”

        “Roasting!” she corrected, skipping to him and giving him a peck on the cheek before leaning out the door. “Because cooking in the parking lot is frowned upon in this establishment!” She yelled down the stairwell. “So I improvised.”

        It took another five minutes for the smoke to clear from the apartment enough for Darcy to close the doors and windows. The heat leeched out with the smoke, and she was left shivering in his favorite pair of short shorts and a t-shirt. Normally, he would have paid closer attention to that, but at the moment he was staring at the kitchen.

        “It’s not that bad,” Darcy said behind him as she fished out a pair of sweats.

        Food was everywhere. Open packages, spilled sauces, chopped vegetables, and cheese spread across the scant counter space. The stove was covered with pots. Half the cabinets were open, and the sink was filled with dishes. He shook his head. “Define bad.”

        She blew a raspberry at him. “I was cleaning, but the alarm went off. Besides, it’s your welcome home dinner.” She poked him in his side. “Appreciate.”

        “Appreciating.” Phil opened the oven and blinked. Inside was a leg of some kind, and he recalled her assertion about kid. Two roasting pans were side by side under the leg, and what looked like chicken wire kept it suspended above them. 

        Darcy pressed against his back. “Its stainless steel not galvanized.” She kissed him behind his ear. “Completely safe.” She pulled an oversized platter out of the cabinet. “I’m gonna need help getting it to the table, though.”

        Phil rolled up his sleeves. 

        Darcy sat down with a sigh once the last dish was on the table, head thrown back. “Finally!” 

        Phil could believe Jane’s comment about the two days of cooking. The table was loaded down with roasted kid and potatoes, feta and tomatoes, salad, stuffed grape leaves, and tzatziki. There was no way they could eat it all, even if they spaced it out over days.

        Darcy smirked across the table. “You’re taking home leftovers. _Lots_ of leftovers. There’s some kind of communal fridge there, right?” She poured wine into his glass before topping off her own. “Break rooms are a universal constant.”

        “If not I’ll have one requisitioned.” Phil’s eyes went to the glass. She was drinking. He looked at his plate. “It was negative, then.”

        Darcy paused in cutting. “Negative?”

        “The test,” he pressed, even though he knew from the panicked wideness of her eyes that she knew what he was talking about. 

        She started cutting again, harder than was strictly necessary, the meat crumbling. “SHEILD does dig through my trash, don’t they?”

        Phil shook his head with a weak smile. “No. I saw the test the day Mark stopped by.”

        She gave up on cutting and set the knife and fork down gently. “I didn’t want you to worry about it,” she sounded guilty.

        He slid the cutlery to himself and shaved off a thin piece with no difficulty and set it on her plate. She really was a wonderful cook. “I wasn’t worried.”

        “I was.” Darcy scratched her head. “I was freaking out. But…false alarm.”

        “You didn’t have to go through it alone.”

        Darcy looked at him at that, piercing and a little afraid. “You ever think about it? Having kids?”

        “Not seriously.” It wasn’t feasible, with his career. He knew agents, good men and women, who died leaving behind children who couldn’t understand. He thought of Agent Esperanza, dead six months after having a little girl. “Field work and families aren’t very compatible. You?”

        “I don’t…” she speared a rolled grape leaf. “Not really mom material.” She dug into the tomatoes.

        He could argue that she was mom material, but Phil let it go. “Thanks for the welcome home dinner.”

        She smiled at him then, a real one that made her eyes sparkle. “Anytime.” 


	2. Chapter 2

        The Tuesday before Thanksgiving Darcy was nervous, though she tried not to show it. Phil had given her the rundown of his cover story with his family. He worked as a government contractor, installing and debugging computer systems. In fact, that was how they met. After he finished his last job he let NASA seduce him into a semi-permanent assignment in New Mexico. He spent four days drilling her in little details that by the time he pronounced her ready she could recite in her sleep, which was the point. His sister might be Air Force, but her clearance only extended so far, and that didn’t include knowing SHIELD existed.

        “So… if no one knows SHIELD exists, how’d you get away with Puente Antiguo?” Her head was cradled on Phil’s thigh as he brushed her hair.

        “NSA, usually,” he explained, working through a stubborn tangle without pulling at her scalp. “SHIELD has carte blanche to use them whenever we want. Fury still won’t say how he managed that.”

        Darcy chuckled. “One day you’ll have to introduce me to him. Give me a few hours heads up first, though.”

        The brush paused. “A few hours?”

        “Yep.”

        “Do I want to know what you’re planning?”

        She smiled. “Nope.” And opened her eyes. “But I promise it will be one hundred percent legal. Mostly. Probably.”

        Less smooth was explaining to her aunt why she wasn’t driving back to Portland.

        “But you promised,” Aunt Ginger started.

        “Promised to think about it,” Darcy covered, shoving a thick green sweater into her suitcase. “For twenty minutes. And I did. I just had another option.”

        “Then Christmas,” Ginger was using the Mega-Aunt voice, the one that made her want to agree to anything just to get it to stop. Fortunately she’d had plenty of experience with dealing with Phil and his Agent voice, which was even worse.

        “I’ll think about it.”

        “Christmas.”

        Darcy huffed. “I’ll _think_ about it.”

        There was a beat of silence, then, “I’ll have to take a trip to New Mexico soon.”

        _That_ was completely left field. “Huh?”

        “Someone’s been teaching you how to stand up for yourself,” her aunt answered with bemusement. “I’m dying to meet them.”

  

        _“Attention everyone, we’re about a hundred miles out from Sunport. We’re running a little ahead of schedule, so those of you needing to catch connectors can breathe easy. The weather is currently 38 degrees, with clear skies.”_

        Darcy shifted in her seat as the pilot came over the intercom; eyes squeezed shut before her features smoothed, the hand in his tensing. Phil smiled into his laptop, checking over the last of his emails before the warning came on to pack up any electronic devices.

        Thanksgiving was a success, more so than he originally planned. Darcy folded into his family like she belonged there after the first few awkward minutes. His niece and nephew adopted her when she told them about her tie-dye projects and promised a hands-on demonstration. He was currently wearing their first attempt, hidden by a thick blue button down. Cassandra and Darcy got along like a house on fire, and very nearly made that a reality when demonstrating some kind of cooking technique to his sister while Phil and his brother-in-law sat outside. Darcy didn’t speak German, but apparently she’d learned several curse words that she and Harold spent hours refining for delivery and correcting pronunciation. 

        That was the first day.

        The day before Thanksgiving she rolled out of bed early and dragged Cassie to the commissary before starting a cooking marathon, a large ‘Keep Out – This Means You!’ sign taped to the kitchen door. Only the kids were allowed to shuffle back and forth with snacks and a simple dinner of sub sandwiches and chips. It was technically Thanksgiving when Darcy fell into bed, smelling of spices and sweat. Their hard work paid off the next evening and for once, the turkey wasn’t dry.

        Harold threatened to steal Darcy and chain her to the stove. He promised to erase any evidence that Harold Olander existed. Sarah and Peter fought over whose room she would share, which turned into a bidding war with each of them giving more and more concessions as Darcy weighed her options. In the end Sarah won by virtue of having a separate bathroom and walk-in closet. Cassie brandished a spoonful of mashed potatoes at her husband before reminding him who cooks the other ninety-nine percent of the year.

        All in all, it was a good Thanksgiving.

        “Darcy?” He shook her hand. “We’re landing soon.”

        “Hm?” She looked up at him bleary-eyed, face red and creased with sleep.

        “We’re almost home.”

        She stretched, toes pointed in her slip-ons. The thin airline blanket fell away at the movement, her rucked up shirt revealing a sliver of pale stomach. “Time’s it?”

        “Almost midnight.” They were scheduled to land at 12:30.

        She stuck her nose behind his ear and inhaled. “You smell good,” she said sleepily, before her expression twisted. “My mouth feels gross.”

        A bottle of water later the plane was on the tarmac.

* * *

        Darcy waited until Phil was gone to check her messages. Two were from her aunt and nieces, wishing her a happy Thanksgiving. More were from Jane and the handful of friends she kept in contact with from school. Her uncle Tony sent her a ‘Wish You Were Here’ pic of him on a beach in Thailand holding some kind of bird leg (too big for a chicken, too small for a turkey) and wearing the most embarrassingly touristy shirt and short combination she’d seen in a long time. She sent back replies, a few pictures of their Thanksgiving spread, one or two of her and Cassie in their aprons.

        It was the other messages she had to deal with now.

        Phil never really asked about her mother, and Darcy didn’t volunteer information. She knew he heard her side of a few conversations, but he never pressed her for details so she tried to keep those two parts of her life as far from each other as possible. She loved her mother, but she guessed that all kids loved their mothers, so that wasn’t saying much. 

        Darcy checked her clock. Jane was still in California and Phil was at work so she could have a nice, long, terrible conversation with her mother with plenty of time left over to recover.

        “I thought you wouldn’t call.”

        Darcy inhaled. “Nice to hear you, too.” Someone spoke in the background and her mother answered back in terse Spanish. “If you’re busy I can-“

        “No. You called.” The heavy metallic sounds and voices faded away. “How have you been?”

        “Fine.” Darcy settled onto her couch. “Work’s good. Weather’s good.”

        “Everything’s good,” her mother finished and Darcy tensed. _Here it comes_. “Ginger was upset you didn’t make it out. Glad to hear everything worked on your end.”

        “Mom…” Darcy rubbed her forehead. “I left you a message.” There was quiet on the other end so long she thought she lost the call. “Mom?”

        “She’s moving down here for a few months. That’s why she wanted you here, so you could help her with apartment hunting. Now she’ll probably end up in the loft out back.”

        _Wait…_ ”Aunt Ginger left Uncle James?” It was official, the world was ending. “She didn’t-“

        “I didn’t say she was leaving him,” her mother cut in. “I said she was moving to Portland for a few months.”

        “Why?” 

        “Because my daughter is three states away, and I need help,” the background noises were getting louder again. “She’s between jobs, so she decided to take some time off.”

        “You never said you needed help-“

        “I’ve asked you to come back, but you always have something better to do. I got tired of asking.”

        Darcy flushed. _You never said you needed me,_ she wanted to say. She would have come, if it was something serious, if her mother would just come out and _say_ what she wanted for the first time in her life instead of leaving breadcrumbs and getting pissed when she didn’t follow them. “What’s wrong? Is it the diner?”

        “Diner’s fine.” There were other voices around her mother now. “Look, I gotta go, lunch rush is starting.” She hung up before Darcy could respond.

        Darcy stared at her phone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Sorry the updates are going slow. I had this whole other plot going, then realized how many 'someone gets kidnapped' stories there were and decided to go another direction, and my brain has been stubborn about getting on another track.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas was supposed to be a time of family and love.  
> Darcy should have known better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I've been having...seperation anxiety... I guess, over this fic. This chapter has been complete for over three weeks, but I'm never satisfied with it. It's been tweaked, added to, subtracted from, trashed and rescued from the recycle bin. So, sorry for the long wait. Have an extra long chapter as my apology.

        When Darcy was eight years old a kitten followed her home from cello practice. She hadn’t known it was there until she climbed the concrete steps to her house and heard the rustle of leaves and a plaintive meow sound from the grouping of azaleas that flanked them. The kitten was dirty-orange with white stripes and had the greenest eyes she had ever seen. She carried him inside, frowning at the close feel of his ribs beneath her palms. She washed him in the bathroom sink and swaddled him in a towel while she grabbed a can of tuna. When she got back to her room he was sitting on the towels, fur sticking up wildly as he tried to clean himself.

        The next morning when she went to school she left her window open and spent the day tied up in knots, wondering if he would be there when she returned. She ran from the bus stop and tripped on the stairs in her haste to get home, and he was still there. There was poo on her bed, so she spent the afternoon washing sheets and watching him watch her. He followed her everywhere, jumping at her ankles; once grabbing her whole foot and kicking hard enough to leave little red lines on the top and sole. She did the same thing the next day, and the next; always leaving the window open. He was always there, either in her room or sitting on the branch outside.

        She had Grinch for three weeks. Darcy emptied her piggy bank and scoured the house for spare change so she could buy tuna for him. When she woke up with little red bites she remembered their neighbor complain about how their dogs always had fleas, so she took the last of her money and brought Grinch a plastic flea collar. At night he would cuddle next to her chest and purr and purr and purr until she fell asleep.

        One day she came home and her mother was there earlier than usual. She’d left her window open, her mother said, and a cat got in the house so she called Animal Control. When she tried to explain that Grinch was hers, that she washed him and fed him they spent the rest of the afternoon and evening disinfecting her room and bleaching _everything_ : towels, sheets, anything he might have touched, until there wasn’t an orange tuft to be found. She couldn’t have pets, that’s what her mother kept telling her whenever she started crying. Darcy wasn’t old enough to look after one properly and she wasn’t going to.

        Years later she saw a cat, dirty-orange with white stripes and half his tail missing dart across the street as she walked home. Her heart jumped into her throat and she called out “Grinch!” She swore he paused and half-turned before he bounded out of sight.

        So when she found four kittens tottering outside Jane’s lab one morning, no hint of their mother in sight after almost five hours of watching them huddle on the CCTV, her response was understandable.

        “Aren’t they adorable?” she asked for what had to be the hundredth time, peering into the box next to her desk. Four sets of eyes stared back, followed by a chorus of mewls. It took two cans of tuna and an hour sitting in the same spot to catch them all, but it was totally worth it.

        “Charming.”

        Darcy winced. “Ouch. Boss lady don’t like teh kittehs?”

        Jane blinked. Slowly. “I never had a pet. My dad was allergic to everything.”

        She reached into the box and let her hand hover over the small animals. When they started sniffing and rubbing against it instead of cowering she picked up a cream colored kitten with slightly yellow paws and set it next to her friend’s elbow on top of a stack of images. The kitten looked around, tail sticking straight up, gold eyes wide as she stared at Jane and the astrophysicist stared back. “Mrs. Butterpaws likes you, though.”

        Jane leaned away from the ball of fluff. “Did I mention I might be allergic?”

        “Eyes itchy?”

        “No.”

        “Nose running?”

        “No.”

        “Feel like you’ll burst into screaming flames if one of them scratches you?”

        “What? No! What does-”

        “Then you’re not allergic!” Darcy scooped up Mrs. Butterpaws and set her quickly back in the box.

        Jane frowned. “That better not be-”

        “I’m on it!” Darcy dashed to the kitchen for paper towels. “She’s just excited to meet you.”

  

_Do me a fav?_

        Phil raised an eyebrow at his phone. _I’m not breaking into Lady Gaga’s email, no matter what you promise._

  _You say that now…_ There was a five minute pause, then. _Can you stop by a pet store and get four flea collars?_

_Flea collars?_

  _Four. Kitten size._ When he didn’t respond she continued. _You know. Like, for kittens._

        He couldn’t help it. He called. “Flea collars?” He asked when she picked up.

        “Uh-huh.” Paper rustled in the background. “The non-toxic kind. And a flea comb. I don’t wanna leave them in the car to go get some. And kitty food, the canned stuff.”

        “You’ll need a litter box, litter, scoop,” he tried to remember everything he’d seen other cat owners have over the years.

        “Exactly!” She tucked the phone under her chin, and he could just make out her instructions to Jane on how her physical file system worked. “We’re gonna be pet parents. Or pet foster parents, however that works.”

        Phil did a mental checklist, eyes going to the ‘Days Without Incident’ sign that Clint put up in his office. Fifty-nine. “I’ll be there around six,” he concluded.

        “Awesome! I’ll be wearing something skimpy. And kitties.”

        Phil set his phone down with a small smile. 

        Kittens.

* * *

        　

        Natasha let herself into the apartment with ease. There was no visible security: no guard, no cameras tucked into unassuming corners, nothing to bar her way other than a glass-paned door whose outer lock was either broken or just left disengaged. The two locks on the apartment door itself were simple, standard issue thing that could be bought at any hardware store and took less than eight seconds to crack. She closed it behind her and stood just inside.

        The tall windows that lined the other end of the apartment let in plenty of light through the half-open blinds. It was cold, the two electric space heaters let her know the old steam vents that lined the walls were either inadequate or didn’t work. Based on what she saw of the rest of the building, she was willing to bank on the latter. She took in the slightly battered couch and coffee table facing a flat-screen television, a round table with two chairs, a cluttered desk and bookcase all leading to what she assumed was a bed half-hidden by a folding screen.

        Splashes of color told the story of Darcy Lewis: a bright purple and blue throw on the couch that matched the swirl-patterned pillows and similarly colored area rug that denoted the living room, oversized posters mostly tacked to the walls with the exception of large, framed picture of the Milky Way above the couch. A cello stood on its stand in the far corner along with a straight-backed chair and music stand. She stood at the entrance to the galley kitchen and noted the two plates, bowl and cutlery in the sink as well as the dozens of novelty magnets that covered the refrigerator.

        There were traces of Phil as well. The dishes were neatly stacked, the bowl itself soaking with soapy water. The lamp on the bedside table had its square shade precisely parallel to the wall and the throw blanket on the couch was folded into a neat square. There was no physical evidence of her handler living there. No clothes or spare ties or toiletries, but he was there none the less. The only things that escaped his rigid sense of order were the desk and bookcase, one loaded down with papers, the other stuffed with fantasy, non-fiction, and text books.

        Natasha picked up a framed picture of a young woman with light brown hair and a smiling blonde man and recognized Dr. Foster and Thor in profile, snapped when they were paying attention to no one but themselves. Another SHIELD asset, Erik Selvig, was in the foreground forlornly staring at a plate of what she assumed were scrambled eggs. There were other pictures scattered about the apartment: people she didn’t recognize, postcards from around the country.

        She did a bug sweep quickly, only mildly surprised when it was clean. The same went for the camera check. The computer she left alone based on prior intelligence. She stood in the center of the apartment when she was done. It was ordinary, no surprises, no pitfalls, just the living space of a twenty four year old former college student. On impulse Natasha went to the bookcase and scanned the broken spines. Darcy was an avid reader of several genres, though most of her collection looked like it was gleaned from the Good Will. She pulled out a photo album and thumbed through it.

        Here was Phil.

        Smiling on the couch. Staring studiously at a SHIELD issued laptop on the desk. Sleeping half beneath the covers of the bed, bare back slightly bronze in the soft light. There were more, of him alone, of him with Lewis. In the back there were pictures of the two of them taken by someone else, sitting around a table. She recognized Cassandra Olander and her husband, a brown-haired forehead that belonged to one of the woman’s two children blurry in the foreground. The last picture was of the two of them on a different couch, Darcy on her back, dark hair a wave that obscured Coulson’s lap as she smiled broadly up at him. A smile he returned. Natasha returned the album to its place and walked briskly to the door.

__

        Phil, she thought as she closed it behind her and relocked it. _What are you doing?_

        The agent was in the bottom lobby when the door to the narrow room swung open, followed by a person balancing a large box that obscured its top half. “Okay, okay,” the woman said as she lowered it, hefting the tall-sided box beneath one arm. “We’re home. Tuna for everyone.”

        Natasha watched as Darcy Lewis walked to her mailbox, glancing between it and the box in her hands before making up her mind and placing her burden on the floor. High pitched mewls came from the container.

        “All right!” She seemed exasperated but happy as she sorted quickly through her mail, tossing a few of the letters in the garbage beneath the boxes. “Bath time first, then tuna, then flea combing,” she said with a voice that brooked no argument and a quick glance at the door across from them. Apartment 1A belonged to her Superintendent, and Natasha doubted the four kittens had been discussed before-hand. 

        She strode forward then, adopting Nadine: soft, open smiles, an easy gait with the barest hint of a limp from an old sports injury. Lewis glanced up at her, then looked up again and met her eyes. “Hey,” she said cheerfully. 

        “Hi.”

        “You here about the apartment?” She gestured vaguely to the ceiling. “Cause if you are, take it. Trust me. Heating sucks, but 1800 square feet is nothing to sneeze at.” 

        She shook her head, sending brown curls bouncing. “No, just visiting a friend.” She held out her hand. “I’m Nadine.”

        “Darcy,” She juggled her mail to free a hand. “Who were you here to see?”

        “Jonathan,” Nadine gestured vaguely to the mailboxes. “308.”

        “Ah, then I’m DD-Darcy.” She rolled her eyes. “Seriously, you’re friends with that guy?”

        “He has his moments.” She bent over slightly, noting the way that Darcy’s eyes followed her. “May I?”

        “Knock yourself out.”

        Four kittens roamed the box, meowing and pawing at the cardboard walls. All except for one: a dark grey tabby who stared at her with blue eyes. Nadine stared back. 

        “They’re not mine, or anything,” Lewis explained. “Well, I found them outside my job, so they’re kinda mine.”

        Nadine reached into the box and picked up the dark kitten by the scruff of his neck, hefting the near weightless animal so she could get a better look.

        “You like Shadow?” Darcy asked. “He’s like their de facto leader. Once I had him, the rest just followed.”

        The kitten in her grip tried to hiss, his eyes large, liquid and hostile. “What do you plan on doing with them?” she asked. 

        Lewis shrugged. “Probably try and find homes for them, keep them for a while till they’re housebroken.”

        Nadine met her eyes. “Can I have him?” She half-lifted the kitten and set him in her palm. With his scruff released his mood didn’t improve and he set about biting at her thumb.

        The girl looked a little shocked, but mostly relieved. “Um…sure… I guess. They’re not housebroken, like I said. Just found them today, actually.”

        She set the kitten back in the box. “That’s fine.”

        Darcy gave her a shrewd, hard look, the kind Natasha wouldn’t have counted on her being able to make. Her expression cleared with a blink, having found whatever she was looking for. “Do you have something to keep him in? Do you live close?”

        That was how Natasha found herself driving to White Sands with a clothes basket containing a small kitten in her front seat with a trash bag acting as an impromptu lid. Shadow was curled into a corner, and she could feel its eyes on her the entire drive.

* * *

        True to her word, Darcy was wearing something skimpy when he got to her apartment. 

        The loft was sweltering after the chill of the hallway, but he was willing to forgive that to see Darcy wearing his favorite pair of shorts and a tank top. She was settled on the couch, foot bouncing randomly as she read through a pamphlet from the ASPCA.

        “Phil!” She rocked up from the couch and snatched one of the bags he carried.

        “You said skimpy _and_ kitties,” he remarked with a nod to her outfit.

        “Yeah, I tried.” She gestured to a red cut on her collarbone. “Mrs. Butterpaws is fierce.”

        He rolled his eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

        “I didn’t… wait… what are we talking about again?”

        They sorted through the bags. Non-toxic flea collars, flea dip, and combs went to one side, kitten food (wet and dry) on the counter next to the refrigerator. Darcy hefted the litter box over her head. “Thank you,” she said, grabbing the bag of litter as she ripped open a bag of pan liners. “I had to improvise.” 

        He watched as she poured a layer of litter. “Improvise.”

        The bathroom was surprisingly clean when she opened the door, with the exception of the roll of toilet paper strewn on the floor. The kittens froze, one of them buried in a mountain of white paper while the other two looked to be in the process of pouncing at the roll again. 

        “Dude!” Darcy set the litter box on the opposite side of the toilet. “Quigley, I know this was your idea!”

        She picked up a cardboard box that he saw was lined with a trash bag and half-filled with reddish dirt. As he set it outside the bathroom she fished a brownish-beige kitten out of the group and set it in the litter box. “This is your pee place,” she said matter-of-factly.

        Phil watched from the door as she did the same with each kitten, letting them explore the new element in their small world before adding another. Mrs. Butterpaws seemed the least impressed with the arrangement, while Quigley and Merlin dug around trying to see how deep the box went.

        “So, we have three weeks to Christmas. That means three weeks to find them homes.”

        Phil stayed motionless in the door while Merlin sniffed his shoes. “Three weeks?”

        “Best case scenario.” She smirked up at him. “I have a couple. Made a Power Point presentation and everything.”

        He contemplated how strange it was that that admission was so arousing. Darcy must have noticed the change in his mood, because she shook her head. “Bath time first, then naked fun.”

        Bath time meant scrubbing with the dip, picking each kitten with the flea comb (thankfully he brought two. Old habits die hard), and then washing them again in Dawn. Quigley and Merlin were fairly easy to deal with; both seemed to freeze on entering the water and stayed that way until removed.

        Mrs. Butterpaws was a nightmare.

        Darcy tried first, and ended up with long scratches on her shoulder when the kitten bolted, climbing her front and leaping over her shoulder. Falling on the floor from that height only dazed her for a few seconds, and then she curled behind the toilet and tried her hardest to keep from being touched. It took both of them (Darcy holding her by the scruff of the neck while he soaped and rinsed) to get the bath part done. Afterwards she stayed relatively still for the combing while glaring at them both. It took a total of two hours, but finally they were finished and the three piled into their new cat bed, the smaller space heater set on low and sequestered on the clothes hamper. 

        “Owww…oww…owww…” Darcy winced as he applied peroxide to her scratches. “Skimpy was a bad idea.”

        “It’s the thought that counts.” He had a few scratches of his own, but none as deep as the one ringing her shoulder. “She’s a handful.”

        Darcy giggled. “She peed on Jane’s research.”

        “And she still lives?”

        “I know, right? I thought Jane was gonna blow a gasket. Then she went all Zen on me. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

        It was hard to imagine Jane Foster achieving a state _close_ to Zen. The woman was too high strung, too energetic. “I can’t imagine.”

        “Don’t try. I think she broke a few universal constants.” She leaned back into his chest. “So… how does it feel to be the proud parent of three rescued kittens?”

        He thought for a moment. “Exhausting,” he admitted as he spread Neosporin on the cut.

        “We’re lucky; someone got Shadow before I barely got in the door.”

        “Shadow?”

        “The ringleader. I think Mrs. Butterpaws is kinda taking over since he’s gone.” She settled into his body further, touching from stomach to shoulder. “This chick just appeared out of nowhere, looked at him, asked to keep him, and then vanished into the wild.” She tilted her head so she could see him. “Good thing, too. She was incredibly hot.”

        “Really?” He raised an eyebrow.

        “Oh yeah.” Her smile turned sultry. “I have two words for you, Phil. Dat ass.” She reached for her phone. “In fact, I think I took a picture.”

        He pulled her back into his lap, arms folding over hers. “Tell me about it instead.”

  

        Two weeks went by faster than Darcy planned.

        She put up a few flyers around Los Felix, hoping that the Christmas season would get people into pet buying mode. Surprisingly, Mrs. Butterpaws was the first to get adopted. Mrs. Gunner took one look at her, which turned into a staring contest and ultimately became her taking her downstairs four days into their stay. Darcy took it in stride. “They deserve each other,” was her final say on the matter, and judging by the small sound Phil made over the phone he couldn’t agree more.

        Quigley went on day eight, into the arms of a little blonde girl named Silvia who gave her the biggest hug her little arms could manage. It made Darcy tear up, just a touch, as he was put into a carrier and carted away. Quigley was the adventurous one, the first to brave the rest of the apartment while his brother and sister watched from the safety of the bathroom. Which left her and Phil with Merlin the Magnificent, who took the loss of his siblings about as well as she expected from online research. 

        “Mrs. Gunner said she’d take Mer while we’re at my Mom’s.” Darcy tickled Merlin’s stomach while she talked over the phone. The tabby kitten grabbed her fingers and started licking them, his tongue still smooth enough to tickle.

        “Are you sure you want me at your mother’s?” Phil asked. “You seemed less than enthusiastic when we talked.”

        Darcy recalled The Talk. “I got to meet your family. You should meet mine. Aunt Ginger will be there. You’ll like Aunt Ginger.”

        “I have a feeling I should bring my gun.”

        “Only if you want to explain why you shot a woman over Christmas dinner.” God knew she’d wanted to. “Better avoid the temptation.”

        The Plan, as Darcy called it, was simple. They were flying in on the twentieth and spending a week in Portland. The part involving her family consisted of Christmas Eve. Her mother (read: Aunt Ginger) was throwing a Christmas Eve party, and from the not-so-subtle wording on the invitation Darcy got the feeling like she either show up or risk being kidnapped in the middle of the night and dragged back to Portland in the back of her cousin’s Camero.

        That was it.

        Phil called it a LCO (least contact operation). She called it keeping her sanity while making her aunt happy. Either way, it meant spending Christmas with Phil.

        Darcy looked out her window in the general direction of the SHIELD facility. _I swear, if anything happens and we have to come back early I’m going to photobomb your entire server with pictures of Earnest Borgnine in a speedo,_ she thought, eyes narrowing. She didn’t know how she’d do it, not entirely. A specialized .dat file snuck onto Jane’s server and transferred with their weekly data dump was the easiest method she could think of.

* * *

        Phil didn’t really know what to expect.

        There were pictures of Darcy’s childhood home in her file: a dark green two-story bungalow surrounded by trees and plants; all hand tended by Diane Lewis if Darcy was to be believed. It looked cheerful, ordinary, and even quaint with its white trim. Darcy didn’t volunteer many stories from her childhood, and those he heard were missing key details. From what she let slip over the course of their relationship he would have expected the house to be worn down, a place barely holding itself together. He’d worked too long in espionage to discount how often something ordinary was used to hide an underlying darkness.

        With what he knew, or could infer, the Christmas decorations were strangely off-putting.

        “She’s been competing with the Roberson’s since we moved here,” Darcy explained, eyeing the lights spread carefully over the geometric bushes before nodding to a house further down the street. Every eave of her mother’s house glowed with lights, with more twined around the porch posts and lining the stairs. Someone braved the tree near the sidewalk to curl lights up its trunk and through bare branches. “I don’t know why they still try. They lose every year.”

        “Your mother’s really into Christmas,” he noted.

        “Any holiday,” Darcy fished the bottle of wine (expensive, but not _too_ expensive) out of the back seat. “Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July.” She snorted. “They can say anything they want about how she lives, but Diane Lewis will out-cook and out-decorate the competition.” She grabbed his hand, fingers curling tightly around his. Darcy was pale, eyes large and wet. “Let’s get this over with.”

        He counted at least eight different people milling in the house based on the shape of their shadows through the sheer drapes along with louder, higher-pitched voices denoting the presence of perhaps three children. A curtain twitched when they started climbing the steps and the door swung open, flooding the porch with the smells of food and people. The woman in the doorway wasn’t Diane Lewis. Ginger Halloway was shorter than her sister, with dirty blonde hair and limpid brown eyes. “Darcy!” she swept the younger woman into a hug that made her give a grunt that was only slightly overdone.

        “Aunt Ginger.” Darcy started fake-choking. “Air…need… breathe…”

        She was finally released, only to be passed onto a group of cousins crowded just inside the door, and those brown eyes were focused entirely on him. “So, you’re the new man?”

        “Phil, Aunt Ginger!” Darcy called from the center of the pack. “His name is Phil!”

        “Phil Coulson,” he completed, taking the woman’s hand and giving a solid handshake. “Darcy’s told me a lot about you.”

        _That_ wasn’t expected, because her expression went from indulgent to assessing. “Has she, now?”

        Darcy reappeared, a Santa Hat askew on her head and missing her coat. “Down, Aunt Ginger,” she said, and there was actual warmth in her voice. She grabbed him and led him through the crowd and into the living room. She hadn’t expected so many people. He could tell by the thick swallow she gave, the way her hand tightened convulsively on his before she reclaimed it. “Okay,” she said, fixing the Santa hat. “So... Aunt Ginger.” She pointed, and the woman raised a red plastic cup. “Uncle Peter. Sarah, Jessie, Cousin It, Jackie, Kevin, Kevin #2, Uma, Fred, Grandma Halloway, and Harry. Everyone, Phil!” She presented him like a prize, arms spread wide. The pronouncement was met by a chorus of ‘hello’s’. “Phil, everyone!”

        “Pleased to meet you,” he said to the rolling mass of people as someone helped him out of his coat. He hefted the wine. “Is there somewhere to put this, or…?”  
“I’ll take it.”

        He knew from the way Darcy froze next to him who the owner of the voice was.

        Diane Lewis couldn’t have looked more different from her daughter if she tried. She was tall where Darcy was short, blonde where her daughter’s hair was a deep chestnut, brown-eyed and slender. She was also the only person who didn’t look like they were particularly enjoying the get together.

        “Mom, this is Phil Coulson.” He didn’t miss the way Darcy put herself halfway between them. Or the way that neither moved to embrace the other. “Phil, Diane Lewis. My mom.”

        “Ma’am.”

        Diane took the bottle, reading over the vintage with a raised eyebrow. “Ramey?” Before either could answer she turned around and disappeared through the swinging doors.

        Darcy’s expression said she expected it, but Phil felt something tighten between his stomach and chest.

        Ginger was the one who relieved the tension. “So, Dee Dee, Jaime's been thinking about going to your alma mater.”

        It worked. Darcy’s features unfroze and she rolled her eyes. “Please, he’s been scoping out NYU since sixth grade.”

        After that, the party was enjoyable. The majority of Darcy’s family was as open as Ginger Halloway. He was folded into several conversations, invited to try dishes from a substantial spread, more of which appeared half an hour after they arrived. He nursed his single glass of wine and kept his eyes on Darcy’s as she mingled with her family, more of which seemed to show up every ten minutes. Darcy’s mother had six siblings, and it seemed that all of them were present, with accompanying spouses, significant others, children, and extended family.

        Diane didn’t make a reappearance.

        Darcy was across the room when he broached the subject with James. The other man’s mouth turned down at the corners. “She’s doing some catering thing for the people down the block. Half the kitchen’s overrun with staff from the diner.”

        Phil was going to ask if this was normal when he felt Darcy plaster herself against his back. “Glad to see you didn’t run screaming,” she teased, moving to his side.

        He shrugged. “I’ve been to worse.” At least no one was trying to kill the ambassador to Latveria, as opposed to the mission he knew Natasha was currently on. 

        Her eyes sparkled. “Cassandra said the fire damage was minimal.”

        James snorted his seltzer.

        They were both patting him on the back when Darcy’s head came up sharply, and Phil followed suit. Diane had left the kitchen and stalked towards them, black apron still tied around her slender frame.

        “Mom.”

        “Can you help me in the kitchen?” Her mother turned around and walked through the crowd without waiting for a response.

        Darcy flashed him a look that said _help me,_ more clearly than any words. “We really can’t stay too much longer,” he started, hoping to cover for her. “My brother wanted us to stop by sometime before ten.”

        “But you just got here!” the twins said in unison, turning sad eyes to their older cousin. “Your mom made those little cake thingies-“

        “And she won’t let us see what else she’s making-“

        “Kevin said it was duck!” 

        Darcy smiled, but it was only a stretching of her lips. Someone in the background caught her eye and she smirked. “Hey! Johnny! Phil works for NASA!”

        A dark head popped through the crowd. “Yeah right!”

        “Seriously! Like legit. Has the badge and everything to prove it.”

        “Darcy-”

        She pushed him towards a tall, slender youth. “Go, eat, mingle.” 

        He wanted to tell her no, to make some excuse to stay close, but he saw the set of her jaw. It was the same expression she wore when she told him she was dropping out before squaring her shoulders. 

        “Try not to kill each other,” Ginger stage-whispered.

        “I’ll try if she does,” Darcy answered.

  

        The kitchen was a place Darcy loved. It was where her mother, in her few acts of mothering, taught her to cook. It looked different after a complete remodel. The space itself was wider, the counters gleaming steel instead of the white tile of her childhood. The area between the refrigerator and double stove was filled by a marble topped island already covered with a tray of petit-fours. Even the floor was different, the yellow linoleum replaced with black and white checkered squares.

        “Do you remember how to decorate?” her mother asked, directing a stranger to take a tray laden with canapés.

  _Nice to see you, too,_ Darcy thought as she pulled down an industrial black apron. No slogans or pithy pictograms for Diane Lewis. Cooking was serious business.

        “You look good,” her mother said as she stripped the skin off an onion. “You let your hair grow out again.”

        “Got tired of rocking the bob,” Darcy explained as she reached into an apron pocket and fished out an ever-present hairnet. That done she choose one of the pastry bags. “You cut yours.”

        Her mother usually kept her hair long enough to settle on her shoulders, but now it was short, shorter than she’d ever seen it. “Thought it was time for a change,” she said as an explanation.

        They talked about nothing as they worked, and after fifteen minutes Darcy felt like she was going to jump out of her skin. She retreated to her happy place: the ‘official’ story of how she and Phil met. The non-classified parts of her job. How Jane wouldn’t bend on giving her credit in her research, which meant that Darcy Lewis was officially published in a discipline she hadn’t taken a single class for. Her mother listened to it all, silent.

        “Aunt Ginger moved in, yet?” She broached as she piped a flower onto her last cake.

        “Right after Thanksgiving.”

        “Oh.” She half-lifted the tray. “I’ll take these out.”

        “Half,” Diane said shortly. “Smaller tray, frosted glass. The rest are going outside.”

        She had half the small cakes plated in record time. It wasn’t running, she figured when the swinging door closed behind her. She found the buffet table and set the tray in a clear section. Her aunt was next to her before she could turn.

        “How’re you doing?” 

        “Still have my eyes,” Darcy joked. “Did she do this all by herself?”

        Her aunt’s lips thinned. “She took the booking before I came, and wouldn’t let it go. I told her she didn’t have to cook for us, but you know your mother.” She put a hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “If she looks tired make her sit down. In fact, come get me, and I’ll make her sit down.”

        She spared a glance at Phil, who was near the front window talking to… was that Kevin or Kevin #2? It was still freaky, how the twins managed to find boyfriends who looked damn near identical, with the same freaking name and no family relation.

        The kitchen was controlled chaos when she went back in. Three people were taking orders from her mother while two more loaded up trays from the refrigerator. Darcy moved to a clear spot between the utility sink and the backdoor until the crew cleared out.

        “Where’s all that going, anyway?” 

        “The Robersons.”

        She whistled. How the hell had that worked out? Patty Roberson hated her mother almost as much as Diane hated her. “Soooo…. You’re doing catering now.”

        Diane hefted a pot from the stove and carried it to the sink, brushing Darcy aside when she moved to help. “Since September.” She lifted the insert and tilted the remaining pot of boiling water. Steam fogged the window over the sink.

        “How’s that working out?”

        Her mother huffed. “It’s working.” She tossed a pair of dark gloves at her daughter. “Peel those while they’re still hot and toss them back in.”

        Darcy eyed the pot of potatoes. If she knew she was going to be put to works he would have worn a thinner sweater. “Who’s this for?”

        “Party tomorrow afternoon.” Her mother gave her a look that said _get to it_ more clearly than words.

        They worked in silence for several minutes. There was something on her mother’s mind, she could practically taste it. The woman’s shoulders got tighter, her eyes narrower, with each minute that passed. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. “Mom-“

        “He’s old enough to be your father.”

        Her hands clenched around the potato she was peeling. Diane hadn’t said anything when she introduced Phil. She’d been waiting for her mother’s take on him, on _them_ , ever since. At least it wouldn’t be in front of him.

        Her mother didn’t pause in chopping onions as she continued. “In all New Mexico, you couldn’t find someone who was a little closer to your age?” There was a scrapping sound of wood and metal. 

__

        Here it comes. “You know, I didn’t even notice.” She kept her eyes on the sink, but she knew her mother was looking at her. “Besides, there’s only like, a hundred people in New Mexico.”

        “He’s going bald,” Diane continued.

        Darcy rolled her eyes. “Good thing I’m not sleeping with his hair.”

        The older woman decided to take another approach. “Ginger told me you dropped out.” Her tone went haughty. “After all the drama you pulled about going to school out of state, you just decided to quit a year from graduating.” She chuckled. “Let me guess, he didn’t think you were going in the right _direction_.”

        “Actually, he all but marched me back.” Darcy waved a hand in the air. A piece of potato skin flicked from the glove and landed on the floor a few feet away. “But then we did this new thing called _talking_ , and we both agreed I was right. Well, I agreed. He agreed not to make me hit him over the head with a blunt object.” She finished the potato in hand and tossed it in the pot where it settled with the others.

        “He should have-“

        “Listened to what I wanted,” Darcy interrupted. “You know, like adults… in an adult relationship.”

        Her mother paused in her chopping. “If this is about your father-“

        Darcy dropped her new potato in the sink, the dull thud cutting the older woman off sharply before turning around. “As hard as it may be for you to imagine, everything I do isn’t about you _or_ the things you’ve done. Including my Dad.”

        Her mother glared back. “So I’m supposed to be happy you’re dating someone…what… thirty years older than you?”

        “No,” she made her voice flat and airy, because if she didn’t she would end up screaming, and if she started screaming Phil would show up no matter how many promises she’d made him make, and he didn’t need to get involved in this catfight. “You’re supposed to be happy I found someone I like enough to bring back home. Someone who’s _doing_ something, who doesn’t hurt me, who’s actually a good person and not just a quick screw in a bar bathroom.” She turned back to the sink and fished out the half-peeled potato. 

        The chopping sounded, faster and harder. “He’s twice your age. _I_ should be introducing him to you, not the other way around. So you didn’t sleep with him five minutes after meeting him. Am I supposed to be happy about that?”

        _Yes, you should_ , because in the long line of Darcy’s boyfriends, and girlfriends, Phil was the only person who made her feel like herself. Like it didn’t matter that she had weird quirks and hang-ups and a strange, indefinable hatred of ladders. She didn’t have to be someone else with him, and that was more than she’d had with anyone else.

        Darcy wasn’t surprised when the knife clattered to the cutting board behind her. “I told Ginger this mother shit wouldn’t work,” Diane muttered.

        She wasn’t supposed to respond, those were the rules. Diane would mutter to herself, knowing everyone could hear, but you weren’t supposed to say anything back. Because she wasn’t muttering to _you,_ she was muttering to herself and there was supposed to be some kind of difference. “You know why it doesn’t work?” Darcy asked. “Because you have to have _been_ a mother, at least once, before you can pretend to be concerned like one.”

        Her mother rolled her eyes. “So this is about me-“

        The potato made a satisfying smack as it hit the wall behind her mother, rattling the hanging collection of utensils over the stove and plopping down into the pot of stock. 

        _Two points,_ Darcy thought. 

        “You want to know what this is about? This is about the fact that I didn’t know you were my mom until I was four years old.” Her voice was cold and even and unrecognizable. “The not taking your meds, the leaving me alone for days when you wanted to go off with a new boyfriend.” Her mother went pale at that, and something in her stomach dropped. “About you refusing to help me pay for college unless I stayed in Oregon. This is about all the _shit_ you put me through growing up, and I’m supposed to stand here and listen to you try and rip into someone I care about and just nod along like what you say means one fucking thing to me? The only reason I’m here, the _only_ reason, is because of Aunt Ginger.” She’d gone from standing by the sink to leaning forward over the island across from her mother, arms shaking. 

        Diane stood there, brown eyes wide, color sweeping its way up her neck. “Are you done?”

        Darcy laughed. She honest to goodness laughed and it wasn’t the response her mother expected, if the way her eyebrows dropped was any indication. “You know what? I am.” She pulled off her apron and threw it over the pile of onions before giving her mother her most contempt-laced smile. “Merry Christmas.”

* * *

        She hadn’t said a word since they left.

        Phil braved a glance at her. Darcy was curled in the passenger seat, bare heels balanced on its edge, knees folded to her chest. She kept her eyes focused on the traffic in front of them, her mouth a flat line. It was a pose he’d seen before, and it never meant good news.

        He thought back to how she looked when she exited the kitchen. He wasn’t sure who noticed the raised voice first, him or Ginger. When the sound cut off abruptly she separated herself from leading the kids in a rendition of Frosty the Snowman and started towards the swinging door. Darcy pushed through before she got there, face flushed, blue sweater pushed up to her elbows. Her eyes found his across the house with a look that was eerily reminiscent of Hill. That look said _leaving. Now._

        She brushed off whatever her aunt said to her while he fished through the collection of coats draped over a corner chair. Her color was still high when she announced they were leaving over whatever objections the other woman was trying to raise. Darcy finally said something, something he didn’t hear, and her aunt recoiled and turned to look at the kitchen doors before stomping towards them.

        She was quiet until they got to their room at the Marriot. When the door closed behind him she made a sound, like air escaping from a balloon, as she toed off her flats and sat on the bed, her back to the door.

        To him.

        Phil hung up his jacket and put both their shoes in the closet.

        “She doesn’t like you,” Darcy said finally.

        He forced himself to smile. “I’ll grow on her.”

        Darcy’s shoulders slumped, but she kept her eyes on the curtains. Through the sheers he could make out the courtyard, the pool glowing bright blue and throwing dancing lights on the patio furniture. “She liked _Mark_ , Phil.”

        He let the dig slide and went to sit next to her. “Do you like me?”

        She punched him in the side.

        “Good. Because I’m not going anywhere.”

        It was strange, in a way that wasn’t strange at all, that _that_ was what made her cry.

  

        Phil was sleeping.

        Darcy watched him. She liked watching Phil sleep, even though she knew it drove him crazy sometimes, especially when she stared too hard and woke him up. So she indulged in it only a few times a month, once a week, tops. 

        He was on his stomach, arms curled around his pillow, breathing quiet and even, features smooth. No nightmares, not yet, anyway. She wondered if he knew that was half the reason she watched him sleep, waiting for his hands to clench, his features to change. It was happening less, the times she had to wake him up, but they would always come back.

        Phil’s nose wrinkled and he changed position, bringing himself slightly closer to her. She fought down the urge to tickle the tip of his nose, and her hands fisted. 

        She’d been with Phil seven months. _Six_ , some part of her corrected, because the month that Phil was missing didn’t count in some bizarre way. Seven months and four days, if someone was counting, which she was. It was the longest time she’d ever stayed in a single relationship. There were times when she couldn’t believe it. He put up with her, with her family. He had introduced her to his family, the first time that happened since highschool. Taught her how to fight, even promised to introduce her to someone named Natasha if she kept improving. He didn’t mind cooking, or doing the dishes. He didn’t mind _her._ There were times she found it hard to think of what would happen tomorrow. Times when he was all she could think about, when the thought of not being with him made something twist in her stomach. When the thought of him leaving made her want to grab on to him and beg him to never leave. 

        And it scared the living hell out of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we're almost at the end. Only one more chapter for this section of my 'verse. Thanks for hanging in there with me, and I hope you've enjoyed the read :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Here is the last chapter of this part of my verse. 
> 
> This part is kinda sad, and has mentions of mental illness and physical illness, so please be aware.

        The first week of January was quiet.

        It had the usual post holiday season feel: overstuffed from Thanksgiving and Christmas, traveled out from running around the world trying to see family. Partially hung over from New Years and one too many watermelon margaritas. There was snow on New Years, too. A steady dusting that slowly coated the town in fluffy white. She and Phil spent the afternoon just outside of town throwing snowballs at each other, which was noticed by a few people and devolved into a town-wide snowball frenzy that would be remembered for the next decade. Paul Andrews, an old man who walked with a cane and seemed only a stiff breeze from falling over pummeled the competition from his position behind an embankment and earned her eternal respect. Once the snow melted Darcy was content to let the cold weather keep her indoors. Between Merlin and Phil she always had something to cuddle with.

        Jane had other ideas.

        “I need an arc reactor.”

        Darcy pulled the pen from her mouth. “An arc reactor.”

        “Yes.”

        She looked around the lab. There were a few new pieces Jane invented over Christmas break, an artistic rendition of Thor’s outline of the universe hung on one wall, and there were a few dishes in the sink. No one was jumping out of the shadows to tell her she was on Punked! “The thing that powers Iron Man.”

        “That’s the one.”

        She blinked, and then squinted her eyes before widening them comically. “Oh, God. It’s happening. You’re becoming a supervillain, aren’t you?”

        Jane leaned back in her chair. “If I’m right, Asgard is somewhere in Omega Ceti. If I’m ever gonna be able to get a message there, I _need_ a power source. There isn’t a conventional source that can give me enough power to make it there in the next three hundred years.”

        “Hence the arc reactor?”

        “Exactly.”

        Darcy tilted her head. “So… any old arc reactor will do?”

        Jane rolled her eyes. “Tony Stark keeps all the specs on the reactors. I mean _all_ of them. He even managed to cock-block the government after that crazy Russian guy made his own and have it declared his under some kind of stolen technology law.” She ran a hand through her hair. “He attacks any websites that have theories on how the thing works, except for the crazy conspiracy ones that say it’s actually some kind of alien tech.” 

        “Because we both know how _crazy_ that is,” Darcy said solemnly.

        Jane stood up and started pacing. “I mean if I could just get a _look_ at one, see how it works…”

        “And you told SHIELD?”

        Jane looked down guiltily. 

        “Jane?”

        “I sent some of my research to Stark directly,” she said defensively. “Just enough to get him interested.”

        “Oh…God…” Darcy started laughing. “Exactly how sore is your ass right now?”

        Her boss could glower with the best of them. “I have a meeting with some guy named Fury in an hour.”

        That cut her laughing short. Hard. “Fury?” Darcy gulped. “Nick Fury?”

        “Yeah.” Jane peered at her suspiciously. “Why?”

        Darcy didn’t answer. She was shutting her computer down and packing up her Ipod.

        “Darcy?” She could hear Jane coming closer. “Darcy!”

        “I am not getting caught up in this one, boss-lady,” she answered. “You kicked this hornet’s nest, you deal with it.” God, Jane was so dead.

        “Wait!” Jane grabbed her bag. “Darcy…”

        She looked at her employer-cum-friend. Jane didn’t appear particularly fearful, which wasn’t saying much. The astrophysicist had the survival instincts of a lemming on PCP, but still. She would have been jotting down her last requests as fast as her fingers could move.“Please tell me you know who Nick Fury is.”

        Jane’s face scrunched up. “Some kind of regional director or something. Couldn’t really tell with Hill screaming at me.”

        “Maria Hill doesn’t scream,” Darcy said automatically. Because that was how she described Hill’s argument with Jane from months ago to Phil, and that was the first thing he said. Hill doesn’t scream. She doesn’t yell. She rips out your spleen and makes you beg her to stop (and okay, _totally_ inappropriate girl-boner there), but she never screamed.

        “You know what I mean,” Jane said. “Anyway, he’s supposed to be coming to ‘explain the situation to me in more detail’ or something.” Jane made her voice flat and commanding.

        Darcy glanced at her non-existent watch. “Yep, gotta go.” She started for the doors. “Nice knowing you, Jane. I’ll tell Thor you never gave up.” She would have been home free, except for three things. 

        One, Jane still had a hand on the shoulder strap of her bag. Two, Jane was capable of emitting some kind of gravity well when she dug her heels in, and Three, Darcy forgot about One and Two in her haste to get out of the blast radius. All of which meant she found herself on her ass, staring up at her boss .

        And Nick Fury, current Director of SHIELD.

        The man was flanked by two of the ever-present suit wearing brigade employed by SHEILD, though neither was from the group assigned to watch Jane. Fury apparently thought _fuck that noise_ when it came to the standard issue uniform, because he was sporting a calf-length leather jacket and some kind of two-piece that looked specially designed for Fucking Your Shit Up, a feeling enhanced by the side-arm she could see under his coat from her current position on the floor. He was staring at them both like he couldn’t believe they were involved in something he had to take care of himself. Darcy worked her mouth for a second, and since no one decided to say anything she broke the tension. Meaning she said the first thing that came to her mind, which was never a good thing. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a nightmare meld of Shaft and a pirate?”

        She could _hear_ Jane gulping.

        “Ms. Lewis,” he said, and she’d had college professors who would kill to be able to put that kind of soul crushing dismissal into two words. “Dr. Foster.”

  

        “…and then Jane gets this look like she’s gonna brain him with one of the staplers,” Darcy said over the phone. “So he gives her this ‘bitch, please’ look and reaches for her hand, and Thing One and Thing Two start reaching for their guns…”

        Phil had his head in his hands. Thankfully, he was in his office, so no one could witness the show of weakness.

        “…and Jane goes into how she’s been doing everything they’ve asked her to since signing on, including keeping the bulk of her research away from the scientific community as a whole, and how much that goes against the spirit of science itself. And how Thor was the scientific discovery of the millennium and she couldn’t say anything about him to anyone…”

        “Is Dr. Foster still alive?” Because he doubted Thor would be willing to deal with them on good terms if anything happened to the petit woman. He hoped Nick remembered that.

        “And that’s the best part,” Darcy finished. “He looks at her and asks ‘What is it you want from us, Dr. Foster.’ And Jane just gets this look like he Frenched her. She takes her hand off the stapler, reached into her desk, and pulls out the notebook I got for her birthday.” He could _hear_ Darcy laughing. “And she says, ‘start on that.’ I think your boss wanted to wack her just for the tone.”

        “We neutralize threats, Darcy,” Phil said automatically. “We don’t ‘wack’.”

        “Yeah, well. He starts flipping through the thing with this ‘she’s too valuable to neutralize’ expression on his face. Then he just stands up and says ‘We’ll be in touch.’ And they leave. Jane managed to make it until they were driving away before she starts twitching and talking to herself, then started working on one of her ‘This equation is laughing at you’ problems. One of the one’s Erik sent her last month.”

        Phil leaned back in his chair. “Is she still working on it?”

        “Nope. She solved it.” Something fell into the sink. “She did her ‘Science, Bitches!’ dance and everything.” Her voice cut out abruptly on the ‘and’ before coming back in. “Hold up, Phil, Aunt Ginger’s on the other line.”

        Coulson counted backwards from one hundred. Nick hadn’t let him know he was in New Mexico, which meant he’d made the side trip with the intent of only seeing Dr. Foster. Ms. Pott’s hadn’t called him yet, so whoever intercepted Jane’s research was on SHIELD’s payroll. He had no doubt that Stark would jump at the chance to try and contact an alien race.

        When he reached thirty he grew concerned. Darcy wasn’t one to leave anyone on hold for long, since she hated it herself. When he needed to start again he stopped typing up his monthly report and put the phone on speaker, starting at it in concern.

        Five minutes later Darcy clicked back over. “Phil?” her voice trembled.

        “What’s happened?”

        “My mom’s in the hospital.”

* * *

        Diane Lewis looked thin.

        Not ‘oh, you’ve been watching your weight’ thin. More ‘oh my God when’s the last time you ate’ thin. The kind of thin that translated into brittle. Her skin, the one thing Darcy inherited from her mother, was sallow and bruised around the eyes and nose. Her hair, always blonde and shining in memory was dull and too thin like the rest of her. If her aunt wasn’t standing next to her assuring her that this was in fact her mother Darcy would have accused her of a cruel trick. How the Hell had she missed this last month? 

        “Mom?” She slid her hand into her mother’s and sobbed and the feel of the bones. Her mother didn’t’ respond, just lay there, silent and still.

        The trip from New Mexico to Portland was a blur. She remembered Phil telling her to let him handle getting her a ticket, a vague recollection of packing some stuff in an overnight bag and waiting for a cab. She got through both airports without thinking, and it wasn’t until she was in her Aunt’s arms that everything seemed to come into sharp focus. 

        “Tom said she just collapsed,” Aunt Ginger explained on the way to the hospital. “She hit her head on one of the counters. Went out like a light.” She guided her sister’s Acura through traffic with practiced ease. “She told me earlier she needed something from the diner. That she felt fine.” 

        _If_ it had just been a bad fall, she would have been okay. Not happy, but okay. But it wasn’t just the fall, it was what _caused_ the fall that had the doctors concerned, that prompted her aunt to call her and ask her to come back home. When Ginger said “Your mother has cancer,” Darcy said the first thing that came to mind.

        “No she doesn’t.” Because no one, _no one_ , was heartless enough to have something like cancer and not let their daughter know.

        Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer six months ago, according to Ginger. Spent a month denying anything was wrong, another pretending that the doctors were wrong, and finally broke and started treatment when it looked like wishing the condition away didn’t work. Ginger had been back and forth from Canada from the beginning. It was the reason for the family reunion, the badgering to come home for Thanksgiving. Christmas…

        She felt like the world’s worst daughter.

        The doctor was very kind and soft spoken as he explained the situation to her. Because of the fall her mother had to have a CT, which showed bleeding from a mass near her pituitary. Without further testing there was no way to be sure, he stressed, but it was possible the cancer had metastasized to her mother’s brain. 

        “Why didn’t she…” Darcy trailed off.

        “She didn’t want you to feel like you _had_ to come home.” Ginger put a comforting hand on her knee. “You were making a life for yourself somewhere else. She wanted you to be happy.”

        “She should have said something.” But Darcy knew her mother. She never said anything, not when it was really important. “At least been less of a bitch about it.” She breathed in, telling herself that the weight she felt pressing against her ribs was entirely in her head. 

        Ginger settled into her chair. “That’s how she is. She didn’t want to tell you, didn’t want you to see her like this.” She gestured to the bed. “You know how she is about her health.”

        Darcy _did_ know. Diane’s mental illness made her wary of hospitals in general. She could count on one hand the number of times her mother took her to the hospital for anything other than a yearly physical and shots, and that was because crazy glue could only do so much. She powered through every illness: cold, flu, even handled a case of walking pneumonia like a boss. “So..umm…does everybody…?”

        “I’ve been leaving it up to her who to tell.” 

        At least she wasn’t the last to know.

        Darcy looked at her mother, at the tubes leading into her arms, the nasal cannula, and had to get _out._ She muttered something to her aunt and all but ran out of the room and didn’t stop moving until she was surrounded by concrete and cars. For the first time in years she really, _really_ , wanted a cigarette.

        She sat on a concrete divider and pulled out her phone. There were two missed calls from Jane, three from Phil, and one from Ginger she hadn’t known she’d missed. Darcy ignored the ones from her boss for the moment. She had no doubt that Jane would pack up the RV and be on the road in an hour if she talked to her right now. She dialed Phil.

        “ Are you all right?”

        There was a small uptilt to the question that let her know he was more concerned than he was letting on. “No,” she answered. Phil listened, quiet, as she explained everything she knew; only prompting her when she was silent for too long. She didn’t cry, but her nose was running and she hadn’t brought any tissues, so the sleeve of her coat was quickly becoming shiny and gross, on top of her butt going numb from the cold.

        When she huffed out, “And then I called you,” she felt like her face was on fire, and the snot made her sound like she had towels stuffed in her head. She could hear Phil thinking over the line, making plans and contingency plans.

        “I can’t get away,” he sound pained. “Not for another week at least.”

        “No white knighting this one,” she said, voice dull. “You can’t just pick up and come running every time I need you.” He didn’t say anything for several seconds, which she took as him trying to find a polite way to say ‘The Hell I can’t’.

        Darcy glanced at her watch. She’d been outside for half an hour, and her bladder was letting her know she needed to pee. Now. “I have to go back inside.”

        “Let me know if you need anything, and I’ll make sure you have it.”

        “I’m staying at home, so I don’t need much,” she huffed in a breath. “But I’ll keep you posted.”

        When Phil hung up she kept the phone to her ear, letting the warmth seep into her cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I apologize for the long wait for this one. The final part of my verse will be posted sometime next week, and will be updated weekly barring accident or internet outage. For everyone who has stuck by this fic, thanks for your support!


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